Oh yeah, I have a blog!

Well, you'd think I'd totally forgotten that I even have a blog, given the frequency of my posts! I guess I need to catch up on Christmas before I move on to other things...

On the 20th we got to spend the day with Grandpa Brown and Eric. The kids were so excited to have them visit. Sarah mad a banner that said, "Welcome home Dad! Thanks for coming to visit Grandpa! Nice to see you Eric!" We all went out to dinner at Puerto Vallarta and then had an early Christmas with gifts from Grandma and Grandpa. Kyle was thrilled with his truck and immediately began driving it up and down the hallway. Sarah loved her new books and Chloe was happy with her doll clothes, even though she didn't have the doll that goes with them yet. She and Grandpa were busy later on trying to see what kind of dolls and stuffed animals the clothes would work with. We had a great visit and wished they could have stayed for longer. But we know Eric was ready to be finished with the long haul from Alaska!!

Christmas Eve was really nice. We went to church and then came home and made our traditional chicken curry for dinner. Kyle fell asleep on Brad and who then layed him down to have a nap on the floor of the living room. This was actually one of his better Sunday naps. Having church from 1:00 - 4:00 pm, when he is usually napping just doesn't agree with him. Everytime he's napped after church he wakes up crying and takes a long time to cheer up. This time he woke up slowly as we were watching The Nativity DVD put out by the church. Then we all got ready for Santa to visit. The girls wrote him cards and helped prepare some food for the reindeer. Then we brought all the presents up from the downstairs. We'd been keeping them down there to prevent Kyle from opening everything before Christmas.

Here's a picture (sorry it's a bit blurry) of our tree on Christmas morning after Santa paid us a visit. His gifts are all the ones in red in the front, plus the 2 trucks for Kyle. Only Kyle's stocking is still there because the girls woke up at 6:30 to open their stockings. They had fun sitting on our bed seeing what Santa had stuffed in there. Then they brought us our stockings. Mine was full of chocolate! Hard for Santa to go wrong there!

You can't see the left side of the tree in the picture but the gifts go all the way around and spilled out onto the kitchen floor. It took us 1 1/2 hours to open everything. Granted, we do it one gift at a time, but there were a lot of presents to open! We are so blessed. It was a fun time.

After presents we made muffins and juice for breakfast and then spent the day calling grandparents and playing with our new things. We went over to Brent and Ashley's for dinner - yummy ham, cheesy potatoes, and homemade rolls! I took my camera, but forgot to use it. Here is a cute picture that Chloe took on her new camera she got from Gramma Curtis: Kyle likes to stare Brent down and of course, Brent stares him right back.

Kyle calls both Brent and Ash "A-lee" and lately has been screaming it whenever we pull into their driveway. He also is constantly asking for A-lee. We're all pretty sure he's talking about Brent, because he usually asks for Da-da and then A-lee. He and Brent are good buddies. Well, I think now I'm going to add as many pictures as it will let me. So here goes....

Brad and Kyle opening Kyle's stocking. He got a lot of hot wheels and a couple of hot wheels airplanes.

This is Chloe with her disco ball from Santa. She's been saying that when she's a teenager she wants a disco ball in her room. Well, she didn't have to wait that long!

This is Sarah in her new robe that I made. It isn't perfect, but she's happy with it!

This is Chloe in her new robe. It's less perfect than Sarah's, but again, she's happy. Notice the matching slippers...

This is Kyle with some new books. He loves books and almost all of his new ones are about trucks -even better!

Merry Christmas!!